Several, one is a pile of rocks. The other two I’ll hopefully be seeing in a few months.
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Gotcha. I was thinking of people who say things like “Black Culture” or “White Culture.” What I see are mostly socioeconomic differences. My kids have very racially mixed friend groups, but none of their friends have a clue about what living on welfare would be like. Example, a Black friend of one of my children has an intact family where both parents are physicians. Not that she might not experience racism, but her life is likely more defined by other factors such as high parental expectations, affluence, travel, growing up in the safety of a very low-crime suburb.
That’s likely true, with some variation depending on where we live and how we are dressed. The poor white person from Appalachia might have security watching them if they went into an expensive store. We have a White friend who invests in real estate in some really economically depressed areas. He has a Porsche, and a Mercedes SUV for driving around town, but he drives an old Chevy van when he goes into the hood. He gets pulled over in that van a lot because it doesn’t belong in his neighborhood.
When I worked in a very poor urban school district near Compton, I had many African American co-workers. They absolutely tended to drive nicer cars, and wear nicer clothes than the rest of us. I’m sure it was a defense for this kind of thing. If you’re a well-dressed African American man driving a Mercedes, you’re less likely to be seen as a possible gang member.
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Awesome! Post pics when you get back. (Maybe not too many of the pile of rocks, though–one or two should be enough to give us a sense of the pile-ness.)
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Just an observation that might be germane to the thread. When I was in teacher college in Sacramento, we had a large concentration of Hmong (S.E. Asian hill tribes that supported the CIA). They moved to the US to avoid extermination - they didn’t want to move, they had no choice.
As “involuntary immigrants,” they had little interest in assimilating, often barbecuing the neighbor’s cat over an open flame in the living room of their apartment.
On the other hand, we also had our share of “voluntary immigrants” that came to the US of their own volition. Voluntary immigrants had a greater interest in success and assimilation.
Former Mexican citizens that became Americans via the annexation of Texas would be involuntary immigrants - as would Africans brought as slaves.
The waves of Irish and Italian immigrants, and others that came voluntarily, would not (obvs, I know).
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I never really had many black-americans friends. There’s mainly Mexican and Turkish Russians here, in my neck of the PNW woods… aside from white, bleeding heart hippies of course.
This is part of my problem when it comes to racism towards black-americans. I see discriminatory jokes towards Mexicans far more. (Ie. my high school was changed from Beaverton to Beanerton, Hillsoboro became Hillsborrito) Also, the Russian women wear headdresses so there are jokes about that.
I’ve got a handful of ‘closer’ friends right now that are african-americans (born in Africa). They have a completely different view on racism.
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First off, you can’t talk about slavery without his younger brother Jim Crow…which extended the effects of slavery legally for 100 years.
I will comment on this with a few anecdotes from my life. Take for example my father in law.
He retired from the air force an E7…grosses around 100k/year in his job. Grew up in a horribly racist area as a kid. I mentioned to him that we should try to get into the medical Marijuana business whenever it is legalized in this area.
His first response “You know they are gonna let those white folks get involved before they let any of US do it.”
Major Effect:
-Black folks think that they can’t do anything without a White person cosigning/allowing them to do it or without the help of the government.
This is internalized.
In another example…a young Black guy who used to be a social worker now owns a wine bar/venue downtown on a nice sized plot of land. He’s now building an events center on it, adjacent to the bar. When he went to the Chamber of Commerce to look for investors, people from the 5 families that own a lot of our city bought all of the land that had parking around his venue. Of course, all those guys are White. Some would call that good business, some would call it racist but ultimately it can be perceived as a mixture of both.
Major Effect:
The issue that persists here is perceived racism is just as powerful, if not more powerful than actual racism. It makes you fucking crazy and has you second guessing everthing for slights against you.
In my last example, the economic empowerment work that I am involved in. We are basically teaching financial literacy, Entrepreneurship, stock market, etc to adults and kids. Over 50,000 students. Classes range from $20/month - 350 for a 12 week bootcamp. The main guy behind it is a finance PHD that has started multiple successful businesses and taught at major universities. When I asked him what the biggest hurdle was to getting people to buy in, he said a lot of Black folks are the biggest supporters of White supremacy. Meaning, they inherently believe a White business is better than a Black one. They inherently believe that Black folks can’t achieve anything without White people or the government (democrats) helping.
You might ask why anyone would believe this. When you grow up in a society where White Men own 86% of businesses and make up the majority of the governments (federal, state, local) you realize you almost do have to go through them. So even though you were/are oppressed by a group, you now have no choice but to hope they will allow you to create something for yourself.
To illustrate this further: the Facebook page for our group had 400K followers. It was abruptly deleted last week after being deactivated a few times over the course of 6 months, all without any notice from FB. This is in addition to multiple other FB pages that champion Black economic empowerment and self determination. We don’t know where this stuff is coming from, but it has gotten to the point where a lawsuit is going to be filed. Is it discrimination by FB? We honestly don’t know. However, these are the sort of things that reinforce that we are not “allowed” to empower ourselves. These sorts of things have happened in different ways from the Wilmington insurrection to the Destruction of Black Wallstreet to the Civil Rights movement to the Black Panthers. The list is long. So on one hand you have people who are lost in a world of violence and drugs, and then on the other extreme you have people like us trying to overcome odds and dealing with resistance from both sides.
I hope this kind of answers your question.
Edit: For Grammar, typing from phone.
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We saw this with Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees here in SoCal. Poverty, displaced people running for their lives, large waves of people living in large ethnic neighborhoods, which often prolonged the adults learning English. We have a Vietnamese gang problem in areas. I’m not sure it’s about “having little interest in assimilating…”, but, agree. There’s such a huge difference between waves of poor refugees, and very wealthy business people from China or Singapore buying million dollar plus homes so their kids have a better chance at getting into a CA university. Agree. Whole different deal.
With the exception of working for a few years in some poor urban areas, and attending high school for a year in Philadelphia, I’d be the same. We have a few Black or Biracial families in our neighborhood, several first generation Americans from Africa, and all highly educated. When your dad gets nominated for the Nobel prize for literature, you probably didn’t grow up in the hood. 
Demographics of the town I’m raising my kids.
50.5% White - With significant numbers Middle Eastern or Jewish. I don’t know the percentages, but it’s high.
39% Asian
Hispanic or Latino 10%
Black 2%
Demographics of the rural country I grew up in.
Native American 40%
White 39%
Hispanic or Latino 33%
Blacks and Asians both under 1%
I knew one Jewish kid. The Black families in my home town were middle-class, owned businesses. One of them had the Ford dealership, and their son was student body president and a football star. He asked the young Puff out a few times.
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I loveee how you refer to your family and kids as the “Puffs.” Makes my day every time.
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What do you guys think of this-
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Looks like a great initiative. Is all not as it seems at first glance?
Is it racist that I thought “Huxtables” when I read this? Or it could be a Tyler Perry movie.
Sorry. Carry on.
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What the hell. I don’t have kids. How drunk was I when I typed that?
EDIT: @Basement_Gainz Weird quote glitch. No, not racist. My first thought was Fresh Prince.
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I think its great too. I just wanted to run it by you guys to see what others think.
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This is an interesting article. Dovetails nicely with some of the topics discussed on the Income Inequality thread.
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I am heartened to know you’re working on the problem in your home area. That makes me happy.
I did get a really good chuckle out of the insurance story, but at the same time it made me feel depressed lol. So much potential–and even the little bit of good intentions to try to leave his kid something to live with.
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Wish I could like this more than once. That’s exactly right, but better to happen in high school than the increased culture shock of college. In high school it is more likely that as they make friends they willferl the ability to work harder, enough to make up for their drop in class standings and regain some of that identity…that’s good training for college and post college where you’re often thrown into the deep end.
Harder to do that if it doesnt happen til you’re away at college and dealing with a whole life change at the same time.
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You may be correct, but I personally believe that perceived discrimination in this area is more a function of loan risk than race. In other words, it’s not because they’re minority, it’s because the banker views the loan as risky due to location/collateral/whatever. We are getting into territory where we are talking about “affordable housing” and all the other things along those lines that. Mandating housing loans in the manner that has been done before is in my view a bad policy with bad economic effects when the bubble bursts. Alas, that is rather outside the thread topic but interesting nonetheless.
Agree here but with an addendum–there are many differences between the plight of the Irish of the 19th century (and other immigrant groups like Germans,etc) and the plight that blacks went through. You can talk about many different aspects, but one I believe salient is that in many ways there was no help from government for them regarding discrimination in employment etc. In other words, it became a matter of survival and “I’ll prove them wrong”. I am not suggesting that we should follow the same path with African-Americans today by any means. I am, however, suggesting that one reason that the Irish reached that cusp was because they had to do it on their own. Motivation matters.
I think this is a fascinating aspect when looking at two different groups with the same racial appearance and heritage–the difference in perspective is very stark. I also think there’s something to what the ‘born in Africa’ group is saying. I’ve had a handful of interaction with members of the same group.
Very true in many cases. I don’t know what exactly needs to be done to ameliorate that, but I do know that at least half of that statement has relatively actionable fixes (“without the help of the government”). If you can get people to believe they don’t need the government, eventually more may make the jump to not worrying about white people cosigning/etc.
Incredibly damaging and also something that can only be fixed by internalization. I don’t think there is any way public policy or government can help that. Just like a person in fitness believing that they’re doomed to be fat or weak, they have to will themselves to change. And that is really fucking hard, particularly with the situations you speak of.
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Just catching up with this thread a little bit.
My heart will always be in special education, BUT for the past few years I’ve been mostly teaching gifted junior high and high school kids outside the public school setting. I sometimes teach/ counsel high school or college students who are taking university extension courses. I have complete autonomy to write curriculum, and develop programs. FREEDOM!! WHOOT!!! When we talk basic brain anatomy/ psycho-biology I take my junior high kids to the medical school and they get to hold an actual human brain in their little gloved hands. I can be creative, and I get to teach some incredibly bright and curious kids. I FREAKING LOVE junior high kids!! They are my thing. That whole awkward, braces, zits, Wonder Years deal. Love it.
I loved working as a counselor for teenage moms. Again, I had complete autonomy there, with very minimal bureaucratic red tape, and it was such a fantastic school. I would have stayed there if we hadn’t needed to move for other goals.
Yes, and we loose some really wonderful special education teachers because of the legalistic compliance/ bureaucratic red tape. It increases every year. Everyone hates it, but we don’t seem to know how to reel it in.
The amount of time I had to spend on administrative tasks as a practicing School Psych was just crushing. If I wanted to spend days in mediation with lawyers, attending fair hearings, having full days of back-to-back IEP meetings where I saw zero kids… I would have been better off going to law school. Seriously.
The motivation to go into teaching is rarely financial. In the not too distant past, it was one of the only careers open to women, and you can think of lower salaries in that light. Also, so many of us make career choices based on other factors, but I doubt I would have felt that I had the freedom to choose education if I thought I’d be the sole, or main breadwinner. Planning to have kids and step back to work part-time or stay at home was always the plan.
@The_Myth mentioned that many teachers can’t afford to buy homes in the area where they teach. It’s not great if you plan to be a single-income family, but a lot of people are in that boat these days, where they need both salaries if they want to live in a safe are with good schools. So many of us choose flexibility to have hours conducive to raising a family, or the emotional rewards of the thing outweigh money. For teachers, you’ve generally need to have a spouse who works, or be coaching and doing other things on the side.
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